Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking

The Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking is a test of creativity.

Building on J.P. Guilford's work and created by Ellis Paul Torrance, the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT), a test of creativity, originally involved simple tests of divergent thinking and other problem-solving skills, which were scored on four scales:

The third edition of the TTCT in 1984 eliminated the Flexibility scale from the figural test, but added Resistance to Premature Closure (based on Gestalt Psychology) and Abstractness of Titles as two new criterion-referenced scores on the figural. Torrance called the new scoring procedure Streamlined Scoring. With the five norm-referenced measures that he now had (fluency, originality, abstractness of titles, elaboration and resistance to premature closure), he added 13 criterion-referenced measures which include: emotional expressiveness, story-telling articulateness, movement or actions, expressiveness of titles, syntheses of incomplete figures, synthesis of lines, of circles, unusual visualization, extending or breaking boundaries, humor, richness of imagery, colourfulness of imagery, and fantasy.

According to Arasteh and Arasteh (1976) the most systematic assessment of creativity in elementary school children has been conducted by Torrance and his associates (1960a,1960b, 1960c, 1961,1962,1962a,1963a 1964), who have developed and administered the Minnesota Tests of Creative Thinking (MTCT), which was later renamed as the TTCT, to several thousands of school children. Although they have used many of Guilfords concepts in their test construction, the Minnesota group, in contrast to Guilford, has devised tasks which can be scored for several factors, involving both verbal and non-verbal aspects and relying on senses other than vision. These tests represent a fairly sharp departure from the factor type tests developed by Guilford and his associates (Guilford, Merrifield and Cox, 1961; Merrifield, Guilford and Gershan,1963), and they also differ from the battery developed by Wallach and Kogan (1965), which contains measures representing creative tendencies that are similar in nature (Torrance, 1968).

To date, several longitudinal studies have been conducted to follow up the elementary school-aged students who were first administered the Torrance Tests in 1958 in Minnesota. There was a 22-year follow-up, a 40-year follow-up, and a 50-year follow-up

Torrance (1962) grouped the different subtests of the Minnesota Tests of Creative Thinking (MTCT) into three categories.

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